Faithful Dissenters
Stories of Men and Women Who Loved and Challenged the Church

Robert McClory
180 pages
Orbis Books, 2000
$16.00
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From the Publisher
Faithful Dissenters tells the stories of people who took risky stands and sometimes paid heavily, yet the benefits of their dissent have unquestionably enriched the church and all of us. They include Catherine of Siena, Thomas Aquinas, Hildegard of Bingen, Yves Conger, and Matteo Ricci. Here is a respectful and enlightening reexamination of a word that is at once charged, misunderstood, and filled with potential to heal.

About the Author
Robert McClory is associate professor of journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He is the author of several highly acclaimed books on aspects of church history, including Power and the Papacy and Turning Point.

Review
Church naysayers and grousers take heart! For that matter, gather the adolescents together as well, when they are in the mood for a gripe fest. This is a book for all Christians who disagree with an "official" interpretation of a particular Catholic or Christian doctrine or teaching. Robert McClory, a journalism professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, has compiled a short list of Catholic reformers - six women and ten men - who dissented from one or more of the "official" church teachings of their era. Eventually, these "faithful dissenters" enriched the Church's understanding of faith, but during their own lifetimes most suffered at the hands Catholic officials. Ironically, the controversial, if not heretical, opinions of many of these 16 Catholic activists are now generally accepted as "official" teachings of the Catholic Church.

The reformers in this book provide a model for those who disagree but want to remain a faithful Catholic. The stories are filled with examples of patience, humility, long suffering, dependence and surrender to God and God's will. McClory's dissenters are also essential stories for anyone working with youth in pre-adolescence or adolescence, the age in human development when "dissent" is emblazoned across the foreheads of most boys and girls. As any parent or educator knows, even Green Beret training is insufficient preparation for entering a room full of youth in the throes of puberty. Sniper fire is less dangerous and more predictable. McClory's book can help in the education process of learning the social and emotional skills for doing this by providing role models and a positive channel for youthful "reformist" energy.

As McClory says in the afterward of his book, "These dissenters challenged fossilized traditions and seemingly irreformable doctrines, opened locked windows, and pushed the Church (sometimes kicking and screaming) into the future." These were holy men and women who knew what it meant to love imperfect people in an imperfect world, while still clinging to a vision of a better church and human race. If you're angry at some aspect of Catholic teaching or practice, or you're teaching young people, or ministering to them in some way, keep Faithful Dissenters by your bedside table. It may remind you that you or one of those aggravating young dissenters you bravely face each week may be the next person to force the faith community to a deeper understanding of its mission as followers of Jesus.

Mark Markuly is the Associate director of religious education, Diocese of Belleville, IL.

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